Alien Craft Lands on Planet Today

UPDATE: It landed successfully. At about 12 Noon Mountain Time Monday, a little spacecraft will complete its journey to Mars and land on a very boring, flat desert-like area. The Insight lander has been sent by NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to basically ignore the surface of the red planet, but monitor what's going on underneath.

The lander will go through all the automated landing procedures today, November 26, with scientists holding their collective breath back on Earth. Once it lands, it will deploy some solar panels and get the power going that will run its seismograph and other sensors to "listen" for mars-quakes and other other disturbances under the surface. NASA does a great job of bringing the event to the general public. Check out the on-line features or find the NASA Channel on your television offerings. A huge dust storm earlier this year hampered some of the other robotic landers on the planet this year, including the Opportunity rover. Insight's landing is the most recent mission to Mars by the NASA space agency.